A 1937 drawing by Australian artist
Lloyd Rees
took off like a rocket at a Sotheby’s sale in New York on January 25.

The drawing, a pencil on cream woven paper image of the north shore Sydney suburb Lane Cove, sold for $US22,500, including the auction house’s 25 per cent buyer’s premium. Its $US18,000 hammer price was more than five times higher than its $US2500 to $US3500 pre-sale estimate.

It was sold in a lot with an American school, 20th century drawing called Garden Shed. That work, a pen, black ink and wash on paper, was by an unknown artist and signed only with the letters L.R.

The Lane Cove drawing measured only 19.7cm by 27.9cm, the other 20cm by 10.8cm.

They were among works from the collection of New Yorker Charles Ryskamp, who was director of two prestigious New York cultural institutions: The Pierpont Morgan Library, now The Morgan Library & Museum, which he ran from 1969 to 1987, and the Frick Collection, which he oversaw until his retirement in 1997.

Ryskamp died in March last year. The sale of drawings, furniture and decorations from his homes in New York and Princeton was mainly for the benefit of Princeton University, where in 1955 Ryskamp began his academic career teaching 18th century British literature.

Among those bidding for the Rees drawing was Sydney art dealer Christopher Day, who says he dropped out after $10,000.

He says the drawing was once owned by Australian collector Patrick Corrigan and that Sydney dealer Martin Browne sold it to Ryskamp in the mid-1990s.